Fat Cat Spreads Out Read online

  “And I take it Patrice is more . . . disorderly?”

  “She’s the creative type, I’ve always thought. I think the world of my cousin, but she is different.”

  “Are you going to finish that sandwich?”

  Mike handed her the last little bit of his sub.

  “I thought Quincy might like a bite.”

  “That is not what he should be eating.”

  “Just the meat?”

  “It’s pepperoni! No, not even the meat.”

  Mike seemed awfully grouchy today, Chase thought, walking back to the Bar None booth after a brief Quincy cuddle.

  Mike should come clean and tell the police why he was really there. He could get himself into all kinds of trouble if he didn’t. He probably didn’t want to put suspicion on Patrice. However, her mother had done it for him. What a mess!

  She peeked into the butter building and, sure enough, Winn Cardiman’s station was empty. Even his sculpture was gone.

  Was he innocent of Larry Oake’s death, or was he cleverly trying to throw everyone off?

  ELEVEN

  The last time the man stuck a treat into the cat’s cage, the latch hadn’t seated properly. The doctor had been in a hurry to treat a dog who had been yelping. The dog had howled forever, hurting the cat’s ears. The cat hadn’t dared leave the cage while the dog was there. He lay down for a nap and was eventually awakened by voices in the outer room. One was his own human, the other the pet doctor who was watching him lately. It was simple to lift the lever and walk out when his human left. He didn’t get as many treats here as he did at home. He went searching for some more.

  Dr. Ramos came running after Chase. “Your cat is loose,” he called. He caught up with her as she walked out of the butter building.

  “You let him out?”

  “I didn’t let him out any more than you ever let him out when he runs away.”

  She was glad he recognized that Quincy’s escapades were out of her control. “Where are the treats I left with you this morning?”

  Mike held up the plastic bag.

  “Oh, good, you have them. Give me one, then,” Chase said. She started calling his name and waving the treat close to the ground, hoping Quincy would smell it or hear her and would then respond. Those first two wouldn’t necessarily lead to the third. After all, he was a cat.

  She went up and down the midway twice, sticking to one side while Mike patrolled the other. Her first time past the Bar None booth, she stopped in to tell Anna what was happening. Anna had a steady flow of customers, so she had to stay where she was, but she wished Chase luck with the hunt.

  In a tiresome repeat of Quincy’s previous escapade, Chase encountered several vendors who had either admired or fed him—or both—but none who had thought to pick him up and capture him until his owner arrived.

  Out by the rides, the ring toss barker had seen Quincy this time.

  “That cat jumped into my booth and started batting at my rings.” He pointed to where they swung on the large nail hammered into the wooden frame.

  “Was anything damaged?” Chase asked.

  When he said it was not, Chase apologized for her cat and moved on. Quincy had also chased the balls a customer was throwing at the milk bottles and had pounced on the plastic ducks in the kiddie duck pond.

  She trudged back to the midway where the Bar None booth sat and walked the length of that again.

  The man who sold handmade glass mobiles was adamant that he hadn’t let the cat near his booth. Smart move, thought Chase. His wares were fragile. The cupcake sellers had given him a few bites. They stressed that they hadn’t let him have any frosting. Chase groaned inwardly. The game vendor said Quincy had jumped up and walked across all the boards, spread out for demonstration. He had fed him a bit of cheese. Some small children thought he was part of the advertising and convinced their parents to buy three games. She thought he might be hiding among the children’s clothing. Hand-smocked dresses hung on a line at the side of the booth. He wasn’t there, though he had been earlier. The older couple running the booth thought it was adorable the way he had played peekaboo with the clothes. They had slipped him cookies.

  Chase wondered if all the other vendors thought he was a cat that lived at the fair. They couldn’t, could they, when she and her friends worried and searched for him constantly?

  When she passed Harper’s Toys, she didn’t intend to talk to him, but he asked her what she was doing, waving that bag around.

  “I’m trying to find my cat, who ran away,” she said.

  “Looking for a feral cat?”

  “He’s not feral,” she snapped. “He just got away.” She glanced over his collection and spotted some large, old-fashioned toys made up of a cup on a short wooden stick and a ball attached to it with a string. The object of the game was to toss the ball into the cup. A crude drawing showed how to play.

  “Say,” she said, picking one up. “Could I borrow this?” She thought she might trail it along after her and lure Quincy from wherever he was. The string was long.

  “Gimme that.” The horrid man snatched it from her hands. “You can have it if you pay for it.” One of his bluish tattoos looked like a cat, but not a nice one. It bared sharp, snarling teeth and had the eyes of a devil-cat.

  Chase tried to give him a stern look, but it had no effect. She left and returned to the Bar None booth.

  “Hello, dearie.”

  Chase turned at the familiar voice. “Ms. Bjorn, how good to see you here.”

  The tiny, gray-haired woman leaned on the arm of her neighbor Professor Anderson Fear. They both lived a short distance from the Bar None on Fourteenth Avenue Southeast. They both peered at Chase through their glasses. Hilda Bjorn’s lenses were shiny and wire-rimmed, while Professor Fear’s were thick and smudged.

  “I came for some more of those Raspberry Chiffon Bars. The girl at your shop said you were out of them there.”

  “And you came all the way here for them?” Anna said. “I’m afraid we didn’t make any this week.”

  “We didn’t think they would hold up here, without refrigeration,” Chase added.

  Anna held up a small box of Harvest Bars and opened them for inspection. “These are brand-new. Maybe you’ll like these.”

  Professor Fear peered at the box and sniffed. “Pumpkin. I’ll take a box, too.”

  While Anna wrapped their purchases, Hilda Bjorn pulled Chase close to whisper to her. “I know this is nonsense,” she said, “but I just saw a cat who looks exactly like Quincy.”

  “Where?”

  “He was napping in that big building.”

  “On a glass case,” Professor Fear said. “In the room with the cat food things.”

  “We thought the cat might be part of their display.”

  Chase thanked them, left Anna to finish collecting their money, and ran to the main building.

  She cautiously peeked into the cat food company’s exhibit room and there Quincy was, curled up on top of the glass case that displayed the cat food bags and photos of cute kitties eating Picky Puss from fancy bowls. His tail covered his nose and he looked so comfy she hated to disturb him.

  Oh so carefully, she tiptoed to him and gathered him into her arms. The lights for the display made the top of the case nice and warm. She thought that might be what had attracted him to it. There didn’t seem to be food nearby.

  “That cat likes the corn chips.”

  She whirled to face the man she knew only as Papa—Peter’s father, the man with the accent. She looked back at the case. It was sprinkled with a few teensy crumbs, next to where Quincy’s head had been.

  “You fed him corn chips?” Mike wasn’t going to like this one little bit.

  “He seem like he is hungry.” His accent was heavy.

  The younger man, the one she’d seen with him
the day before in this room, came rushing up. “There you are,” he said, relief in his tone. “Where have you been?”

  “I want to look where collar was.”

  “Sorry if my father was bothering you.” The man shook hands with Chase. “I’m Peter Aronoff, Ivan’s son.”

  “My good, brave only son,” Ivan said.

  Peter took his father’s upper arm and tried to pull him away.

  Ivan shook him off. “I not ready to go yet. Look, see what they wrote?” He pointed to the sign beside the empty cushion and laboriously read the whole thing. “DIAMOND CAT COLLAR” was in large letters. Beneath, in smaller print, it said “Designed and donated to the Bunyan County Fair by Picky Puss Cat Food. Pick the only food for your picky cat: Picky Puss.” He turned to Chase. “It says it was donated by the company.”

  “I see that,” Chase said. The sign hadn’t changed, but she hadn’t noticed the parts in smaller print before.

  “They are rich company. Too much money. They glory in donating such a thing.”

  Chase squinted at the card in the glass case. “The print is very small. It doesn’t look like they glory in it to me.”

  “Who are you, anyway?” Ivan said. He took a menacing step toward her.

  Peter put his hand on his father’s arm and shook his head.

  “It not right, Peter, and you know it,” Ivan snarled.

  Peter mouthed the word sorry behind Ivan’s back. “Papa, let’s go. What the company does has nothing to do with me now. It’s perfectly fine. These people don’t want to hear about this.”

  He was finally able to lead Ivan away. The older man was still muttering about diamond collars and fairness and glory.

  A lot of people were concerned about that cat collar.

  * * *

  “Here he is, the rascal,” Chase said, settling Quincy back into the roomy cage in the vet clinic. “Now I guess I’m not the only one he’s escaped from.”

  Mike gave a sheepish grin. “No, you’re not. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cat that clever. Somehow, he was able to get that latch open.”

  “Maybe you didn’t shut it all the way.”

  “Maybe.” Mike rattled the latch and the door, testing it and pondering with a frown.

  The black cat in the neighboring cage flinched at the rattling, then settled down. She wondered if it was the same one she’d seen here before.

  “That’s what happens at home and in the shop,” Chase said. “We leave a door the least little bit cracked, or the latch not quite seated, and away he goes. It’s too bad they’re not having an escape contest for cats. Quincy would win that one for sure.”

  “Are you showing him in the Fancy Cat? Patrice is entering her butterball.”

  “I thought the cat was Princess Puffball.”

  Mike laughed. “That’s her name, but she is a butterball. Wait till you see her.”

  “I hope to. If I can think of how to fancy up Quincy, we’ll be at the competition.”

  Mike scratched his chin. “How about dressing him up as Quincy Jones?”

  “The musician? He’s one of Anna’s favorites.”

  Mike started to look excited. “He’ll need a mustache and a little suit. At least a shirt and a jacket.”

  “A mustache? Really?”

  “Well, maybe not that. But a little suit coat would be doable, don’t you think?”

  Chase did not think so. “Let’s try some more ideas. A Cat-wich?”

  “Like a sandwich or a witch-witch?”

  “Not a witch, he’s a boy. That would be a warlock. Cat-lock?”

  They both groaned.

  “I got nothing else.” Mike turned up his palms in surrender.

  “We’ll keep thinking about it. I’d better get back to the booth.” Since Halloween was coming soon, that might be a good theme to keep in mind. Bat, goblin, ghost, devil—maybe even a superhero, like so many of the little trick-or-treaters.

  When she slid behind the table to help take money from the horde of customers, Anna gave her a grateful grin. “This just doesn’t stop.”

  “We thought we had baked enough for the whole fair, but we hadn’t. Good thing you’ve been doing so much baking this week. Maybe it’s my turn tonight.”

  During the next lull, Anna perched on the chair. “I don’t mind doing all the baking. Bill came over and kept me company after I got back from seeing Elsa at the hotel.”

  “I think you’re seeing about as little of Bill as I’m seeing of Mike.” Chase grabbed a Lemon Bar and took a nibble.

  “Quite a bit less. You’re seeing Dr. Ramos every day here.”

  “I know, but that doesn’t count as seeing seeing. You had a late night, didn’t you?” Chase was still feeling guilty for leaving all the baking to Anna.

  “No problem. Elsa said she would come over tonight and help out.”

  “Elsa? The wife of the dead man?”

  “Yes, that Elsa. The widow of the dead man. She’s in a terrible state. There’s nothing she can do until the killer is caught. She can’t even have a service for Larry until his body is released.”

  “Is she that upset about his funeral?”

  “Maybe not. She keeps saying it’s so terrible Larry is dead. But then she goes right ahead and starts cursing him for being a sneak and planning to leave her penniless.”

  Chase took a seat on the other folding chair. It creaked as she plopped down. “Anna, she’s his widow, but she’s also a suspect for his murder.”

  “She couldn’t possibly have done it, Charity.”

  “Why not?”

  “She walked in after he was dead.”

  “Maybe she did that after she killed him. You just said he was planning on leaving her high and dry.”

  Anna nodded. “More than just thinking. He rented a studio in Costa Rica.”

  “Yikes! I thought she said Madison.”

  “That’s what he told her, but he was lying. A bill for the rent came to their house. Her sister is taking in the mail and called her, so she just found that out. She wasn’t sad that he was leaving, since they hadn’t been getting along. But she was so mad she was seeing red that he hadn’t told her any of his plans. Elsa says she would have willingly given him a divorce.”

  “You know that a lot of murders happen on the spur of the moment.”

  “Yes, I know. Crimes of passion. But Elsa doesn’t seem like a person who would fly off the handle.”

  “How long have you known her? Three days?”

  “Four, I think.”

  “Do you think you should hang out with her?”

  A half-dozen customers wandered in. Chase quickly finished her Lemon Bar, dusted the powdered sugar off her fingers, and got busy working alongside Anna.

  That evening, while Anna and Elsa were chatting and baking in the kitchen below Chase’s apartment, she tried to brainstorm some costumes for Quincy. She wasn’t coming up with much, so she went down to the kitchen. Three heads would be better than one. And if Anna could fraternize with a murder suspect, so could she. Besides, if Elsa was a murderer, it wasn’t good for Anna to be alone with her.

  As the three women assembled dough and layered the sweet treats together, putting baking pans into the oven and pulling them out like an assembly line, Chase tried to learn more about the woman. Elsa wore cowgirl boots again—red ones tonight—and a long, black skirt. Her arms were flecked with flour and powdered sugar.

  “Do you know when you’re going back to Wisconsin?” Chase asked.

  Elsa knitted her brows in distress. “No, I’m not allowed to leave right now. My sister is on her way tomorrow to keep me company.”

  “That’s good,” Anna said, sticking a bowl of sugar and butter under the mixer to cream. “Are you close to her?”

  “We’re twins, only sixteen minutes apart. She’s bri
nging my birdie. I miss her so much.”

  “What kind of bird?” Anna asked.

  “She’s a parrot, an African grey. I’ll be so happy to see her. I’m just not sure the hotel will be pleased about it.”

  “Would you like to stay at my place? I wouldn’t mind having her. What’s her name?”

  Chase stared, wide-eyed. Anna was offering her home to a murder suspect, and her family, plus her pet. She shook her head behind Elsa’s back, but Anna pointedly ignored her.

  “You and your sister are both welcome. It’s costing a fortune for the hotel, isn’t it?”

  “That won’t be a problem. Larry left me well provided for. He had a huge insurance policy. I’ll be more than fine when that comes through.”

  Another motive, thought Chase. She never did get around to mentioning cat costumes.

  TWELVE

  The kitchen was cleaned up and the two older women had left. Chase stood in the middle of the room, deep in thought.

  Elsa could very well have killed her husband. Her motive was good, since he had a large life insurance policy. Chase assumed that he would have indeed left her high and dry if he had succeeded in divorcing her and moving to Costa Rica, cleaning out bank accounts on his way out of town. No need to spend the money on a divorce when you could leave the country and disappear.

  She started pacing the floor as her thoughts warmed up.

  Winn Cardiman, the butter sculptor whose design was, he said, stolen by Larry Oake, had made such a good suspect. It was a pity he had dropped out of the competition and gone home. He was angry enough to have killed the man in a fit of passion when Chase had been talking to him. Wait, maybe he did kill him, then, realizing what he’d done, left in a hurry. He could still be a suspect. Even if he didn’t need the prize money, he was angry that his design had, he perceived, been stolen.

  She paced faster, suspicions tumbling over one another in her mind.

  The other sculptor, Karl Minsky, was desperate for the money. He was fiercely proud of his daughter’s artistic talents and wanted the best for her. The only problem was, he couldn’t afford the expensive art school she wanted to attend. If he eliminated some competition, he believed he would win, using Mara’s design. To Chase’s eye, it was a little too abstract to appeal to a general population, but maybe the judges were more modern, artistically, than she was.